Cyberspace or Face-to-Face: The Teachable Moment and Changing Reference Mediums.

This article considers the teaching role of reference librarians by studying the teachable moment in reference transactions, and users’ response to that instruction. An empirical study of instruction was conducted in both virtual and traditional reference milieus, examining the following three services: IM (Instant Messaging), chat, and face-to-face reference. The authors used the same criteria in separate studies of all three services to determine if librarians provided analogous levels of instruction and what factors influenced the likelihood of instruction. Methodology employed included transcript analysis, observation, and patron surveys. Findings indicated that patrons wanted instruction in their reference transactions, regardless of medium, and that librarians provided it. However, instructional techniques used by librarians in virtual reference differ somewhat from those used at the reference desk. The authors conclude that reference transactions, in any medium, represent the patron’s point-of-need, thereby presenting the ideal teachable moment

Psychophysiological analysis of a pedagogical agent and robotic peer for individuals with autism spectrum disorders.

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by ongoing problems in social interaction and communication, and engagement in repetitive behaviors. According to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, an estimated 1 in 68 children in the United States has ASD. Mounting evidence shows that many of these individuals display an interest in social interaction with computers and robots and, in general, feel comfortable spending time in such environments. It is known that the subtlety and unpredictability of people’s social behavior are intimidating and confusing for many individuals with ASD. Computerized learning environments and robots, however, prepare a predictable, dependable, and less complicated environment, where the interaction complexity can be adjusted so as to account for these individuals’ needs. The first phase of this dissertation presents an artificial-intelligence-based tutoring system which uses an interactive computer character as a pedagogical agent (PA) that simulates a human tutor teaching sight word reading to individuals with ASD. This phase examines the efficacy of an instructional package comprised of an autonomous pedagogical agent, automatic speech recognition, and an evidence-based instructional procedure referred to as constant time delay (CTD). A concurrent multiple-baseline across-participants design is used to evaluate the efficacy of intervention. Additionally, post-treatment probes are conducted to assess maintenance and generalization. The results suggest that all three participants acquired and maintained new sight words and demonstrated generalized responding. The second phase of this dissertation describes the augmentation of the tutoring system developed in the first phase with an autonomous humanoid robot which serves the instructional role of a peer for the student. In this tutoring paradigm, the robot adopts a peer metaphor, where its function is to act as a peer. With the introduction of the robotic peer (RP), the traditional dyadic interaction in tutoring systems is augmented to a novel triadic interaction in order to enhance the social richness of the tutoring system, and to facilitate learning through peer observation. This phase evaluates the feasibility and effects of using PA-delivered sight word instruction, based on a CTD procedure, within a small-group arrangement including a student with ASD and the robotic peer. A multiple-probe design across word sets, replicated across three participants, is used to evaluate the efficacy of intervention. The findings illustrate that all three participants acquired, maintained, and generalized all the words targeted for instruction. Furthermore, they learned a high percentage (94.44% on average) of the non-target words exclusively instructed to the RP. The data show that not only did the participants learn nontargeted words by observing the instruction to the RP but they also acquired their target words more efficiently and with less errors by the addition of an observational component to the direct instruction. The third and fourth phases of this dissertation focus on physiology-based modeling of the participants’ affective experiences during naturalistic interaction with the developed tutoring system. While computers and robots have begun to co-exist with humans and cooperatively share various tasks; they are still deficient in interpreting and responding to humans as emotional beings. Wearable biosensors that can be used for computerized emotion recognition offer great potential for addressing this issue. The third phase presents a Bluetooth-enabled eyewear – EmotiGO – for unobtrusive acquisition of a set of physiological signals, i.e., skin conductivity, photoplethysmography, and skin temperature, which can be used as autonomic readouts of emotions. EmotiGO is unobtrusive and sufficiently lightweight to be worn comfortably without interfering with the users’ usual activities. This phase presents the architecture of the device and results from testing that verify its effectiveness against an FDA-approved system for physiological measurement. The fourth and final phase attempts to model the students’ engagement levels using their physiological signals collected with EmotiGO during naturalistic interaction with the tutoring system developed in the second phase. Several physiological indices are extracted from each of the signals. The students’ engagement levels during the interaction with the tutoring system are rated by two trained coders using the video recordings of the instructional sessions. Supervised pattern recognition algorithms are subsequently used to map the physiological indices to the engagement scores. The results indicate that the trained models are successful at classifying participants’ engagement levels with the mean classification accuracy of 86.50%. These models are an important step toward an intelligent tutoring system that can dynamically adapt its pedagogical strategies to the affective needs of learners with ASD

Deception in context: coding nonverbal cues, situational variables and risk of detection

There are many situations in which deception may arise and understanding the behaviors associated with it are compounded by various contexts in which it may occur. This paper sets out a coding protocol for identifying cues to deception and reports on three studies, in which deception was studied in different contexts. The contexts involved manipulating risks (i.e., probability) of being detected and reconnaissance, both of which are related to terrorist activities. Two of the studies examined the impact of changing the risks of deception detection, whilst the third investigated increased cognitive demand of duplex deception tasks including reconnaissance and deception. In all three studies, cues to deception were analyzed in relation to observable body movements and subjective impressions given by participants. In general, the results indicate a pattern of hand movement reduction by deceivers, and suggest the notion that raising the risk of detection influences deceivers? behaviors. Participants in the higher risk condition displayed increased negative affect (found in deceivers) and tension (found in both deceivers and truth-tellers) than those in lower risk conditions

Unobtrusive Assessment Of Student Engagement Levels In Online Classroom Environment Using Emotion Analysis

Measuring student engagement has emerged as a significant factor in the process of learning and a good indicator of the knowledge retention capacity of the student. As synchronous online classes have become more prevalent in recent years, gauging a student\u27s attention level is more critical in validating the progress of every student in an online classroom environment. This paper details the study on profiling the student attentiveness to different gradients of engagement level using multiple machine learning models. Results from the high accuracy model and the confidence score obtained from the cloud-based computer vision platform - Amazon Rekognition were then used to statistically validate any correlation between student attentiveness and emotions. This statistical analysis helps to identify the significant emotions that are essential in gauging various engagement levels. This study identified emotions like calm, happy, surprise, and fear are critical in gauging the student\u27s attention level. These findings help in the earlier detection of students with lower attention levels, consequently helping the instructors focus their support and guidance on the students in need, leading to a better online learning environment

How does learners’ behavior attract preservice teachers’ attention during teaching?

Teachers need to continuously monitor students’ engagement in classrooms, but novice teachers have difficulties paying attention to individual behavioral cues in all learners. To investigate these interaction processes in more detail, we re-analyzed eye-tracking data from preservice teachers teaching simulated learners who engaged in different behaviors (Stürmer, Seidel, Müller, Häusler, & Cortina, 2017). With a new methodological approach, we synchronized the data with a continuous annotation of observable student behavior and conducted time series analysis on 3646 s of video material. Results indicate that novice teachers’ attention is attracted most often when learners show (inter)active learning-related behavior

The Effects of Improved Student Transitions on Classroom Management

Effective transitioning of students between learning activities occurs when teachers establish routines and expectations of student movement and behavior wherein students stop one activity and quickly and smoothly segue to the next activity. Effective student transitions increase learning time and provide daily practice of safe movement. At the time of this study, staff and students at the target school, an urban neighborhood, pre-kindergarten through sixth-grade charter school in Texas, had not adopted a campus-wide, all day, every day habit of safe movement and safety sensibilities. Effective student transitioning as a practical, teachable skill was presented to school staff during a day of professional development. Subsequently, staff members taught students incremental steps, and routinely practiced to establish effective transitions. Orderly student transitions were practiced while no crisis was at hand to increase automaticity and consistency of appropriate actions in the case of an actual emergency. The researcher observed teachers during transitions to determine further training needs and provided modeling and coaching to teachers as needed. The researcher analyzed pre- and post-observation data to determine the effectiveness of intervention. Using inductive analysis, the researcher categorized patterns observed in instances of effective and ineffective student transitions and delineated the basic steps of ideal performance expectations for appropriate student transitions. The researcher delineated teachers’ and students’ actions that produced appropriate transitions for various campus venues and activities and designed step-by-step descriptions of structured transition sequences

Verbal dominance vs. temperamental and anxiety variables of FL university students

Głównym tematem artykułu są przeprowadzone badania nad relacją pomiędzy poziomemilościowej dominacji werbalnej wśród studentów anglistyki a ich cechami indywidualnymi(osobowościowymi). Wskaźniki poziomu dominacji poszczególnych studentów obejmują rozmowność,częstotliwość inicjowania oraz średnią długość segmentu czasowego dominacji (Mean Chunk Length), określone na podstawie obserwacji zajęć z konwersacji w języku angielskim,w szczególności dyskusji, w których udział bierze grupa jako całość, lecz uczestnicy spontaniczniezabierają głos, bez wskazywania kolejnego rozmówcy. Różnice indywidualne, określoneprzy pomocy kwestionariuszy osobowości, obejmują cechy temperamentu (właściwości centralnegosystemu nerwowego, ekstrawersję i neurotyzm) oraz poziom lęku (jako cechy i jakostanu). Przedstawiono wykorzystany w badaniu schemat obserwacji służący określaniu dominacjiwśród uczestników oraz wyniki analizy korelacyjnej zmiennych. Wyniki wskazują na istnieniezwiązku pomiędzy obserwowaną strukturą dominacji werbalnej a badanymi różnicami indywidualnymi

Pivotal Response Treatment for Children with Autism in School Settings: A Review of the Literature

Children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) have deficits in social, behavioral, and communicative skills. The purpose of this paper was to evaluate the effectiveness of Pivotal Response Treatment (PRT) for improving these skill deficits. In addition to student outcomes, this paper examined training issues with regard to the teachers, paraprofessionals, and peers who implement PRT in school settings

Giving Four-Year-Old Children a Voice Within the Comprehensive Evaluation of Quality Teaching Practices

Educational research has largely focused on the correlation between governmental entities and classroom pedagogy as policymakers develop more comprehensive evaluation systems that raise the expectations of teacher quality. However, some researchers in the field of early childhood suggest the measurement of teacher quality is largely a “mismatch between informant-based, retroactive methods” (Downer, Booren, Lima, Luckner, & Pianta, 2010, p. 5) as developmentally appropriate measurements of early childhood quality that include the perceptions of the children are few. To examine the potential for researchers to consider the inclusion of children’s perceptions within evaluation systems, this study examines the following area of inquiry: (1) What kind of verbal and visual information is provided by four-year-old children within interviews, story stems, and drawing activities that describe their classroom teacher and the teacher’s classroom practices; and (2) How does what children shared relate to the ECERS-R Interaction dimension. This qualitative study sought to understand how children express their perceptions of their classroom teacher and the teacher’s classroom practices. Data was collected using three measures: (1) verbal interviews; (2) story stem interviews; and (3) drawing activities. Transcribed data was coded and categorized, in which four themes, 11 sub-themes, and four main findings emerged. These themes, sub-themes, and findings suggest four-year-old children are able to share information including emotional experiences within the classroom, classroom procedures, the teacher’s behaviors during free play, and interactions that occur with the teacher and peers. Findings also suggest an alignment of children’s descriptions to the ECERS-R Interaction domain, supporting the consideration of young children’s perceptions within formal evaluation systems